Saturday, April 05, 2008

Police in Surrey are investigating an alleged attempt to kill a KGB double agent who spied on Russia for British intelligence during the Cold War.

Oleg Gordievsky, a former Soviet colonel who defected to Britain in 1985, was taken by ambulance from his home to a hospital in Guildford after falling ill in November.

He believes he was poisoned by a Russian acquaintance, a former intelligence officer who visited him at his safe house in Surrey. After falling unconscious for 34 hours, he spent two weeks in a private clinic and was initially left partially paralysed. He still has no feeling in his fingers.

Mr Gordievsky, 69, fears he is the latest victim of revenge attacks on defectors. Alexander Litvinenko, his friend and another former Russian spy, was murdered in London in 2006.

Special Branch is investigating an alleged attempt to murder Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB double-agent who spied on Russia for British intelligence at the height of the Cold War. The former Soviet colonel, who escaped to Britain in 1985, says he was poisoned by a Russian assassin who visited him at his secret safe-house in Surrey.

He fears he is the latest victim of revenge attacks by Russian intelligence on high-profile defectors. Alexander Litvinenko, another former Russian spy, was murdered in London in 2006.

Gordievsky – awarded one of Britain's highest honours by the Queen last October – was rushed to hospital after collapsing at home. He lay unconscious and "close to death" for 34 hours. He spent a further two weeks recuperating in a private clinic paid for by his former bosses in MI6.

He was initially left partially paralysed by the alleged attack and still has no feeling in his fingers.

Last night Surrey Police confirmed they were investigating a possible attempt on Gordievsky's life.But he claimed that his former MI6 paymasters had attempted to cover it up. He said MI6 forced Special Branch to drop its initial investigation into the case.

Officers were ordered to reopen the inquiry only after pressure by senior intelligence figures, including former MI5 chief Eliza Manningham-Buller.

Lord Butler, the head of the inquiry into intelligence failures in the run-up to the war in Iraq, is also understood to have questioned why the case was not being taken more seriously.

Gordievsky, 69, defected to the UK after more than ten years living a double life spying for British intelligence. He told The Mail on Sunday that he was certain he was the victim of a Kremlin-inspired assassination attempt.

"I've known for some time that I am on the assassination list drawn up by rogue elements in Moscow," he said. "They murdered my friend Alexander Litvinenko. I have no doubt my sudden illness last November was a similar attempt on my life. ... It was obvious to me I had been poisoned... The targets for assassination are well known. First Boris Berezovsky [the multi-millionaire oligarch living in exile in Britain], next the prime minister of Chechnya, then Litvinenko and then I was fourth. Now I remain third."

On Saturday 26th February, Sir Martin Jacomb, Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, conferred an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters of the University on Mr Oleg Gordievsky, the highest ranking KGB officer ever to collaborate with British Intelligence, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to protecting the security and safety of the United Kingdom.

Oleg Gordievsky, 69, who was honoured by the Queen for services to British security last year, fears he could be murdered by Russians in this country, The Sunday Times writes today.

The former KGB officer who spied for Britain says he has become increasingly worried about his safety since the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian Federal Security Service officer, in London 15 months ago. Worsening relations between Britain and Russia have given him further concerns, the paper marks.

Ethanol from Maize (Corn) manufactured in the United States causes massive pollution during manufacturing and transportation (Because of American Ethanol's impurity, it is too corrosive to be pumped into pipelines and has to be transported by truck and rail.).Water in the Ethanol promoted by America's greedy and heartless Liberals also corrodes and eventually destroys the engines of motorcars.

Of far greater import than the ethanol pollution noted above, is the fact that by diverting food crops to the production of Ethanol, America's "Liberal Elite" have caused a plague of starvation and misery that now stretches across the planet.

"What we have," Peraica says, "is a level of corruption that is integrated both vertically and horizontally across all layers of government: city, municipal, county, and state." To him, the Rezko case illustrates that corruption in Illinois is a bipartisan problem. "We have a corrupt political combine, where the members of the two parties. have come together, not pursuant to a public interest, but to pursue their own financial interests, which they have done with great zeal and ingenuity."

This corruption, should it become an issue in the campaign, could cause problems for Obama when people start to wonder how he could have made it through "the combine" without getting involved in the overlapping networks of patronage and influence. Peraica, for one, argues that he didn't. "Senator Barack Obama is an integral part and a product of this corrupt system," Peraica says. "Senator Obama has endorsed Todd Stroger for Cook County board president, Mayor [Richard M.] Daley for mayor of Chicago, Dorothy Tillman for re-election as an alderman, and other epitomes of bad government throughout his career in order to promote himself politically, at the expense of, I would argue, principles and morals and good government."

Obama's relationship with Allison Davis - the alleged go-between in Rezko's scheme to shake down Tom Rosenberg - could pose another problem for him. Obama worked for Davis at the law firm of Davis Miner Barnhill. Later, when Obama sat on the board of a charity called the Woods Fund, he voted to invest $1 million in a partnership operated by Davis, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Levine's testimony in the Rezko trial puts Davis in the middle of an attempted quid pro quo, making him yet another associate Obama might be pressured to disown. And the trial could stretch well into May, at which point a Rezko conviction could lead to even more headaches for the candidate. If Rezko is looking at a long prison sentence and decides to start talking, who knows what he might say?

All the more reason that Obama might be tempted to try to address this metastasizing problem with a single bold gesture. Obama made a big speech about race to distract from his ties to one unsavory Chicago character, but distancing himself from an entire network of them might prove to be a tougher task. After all, Obama was able to claim the middle ground in his defense of Wright, denouncing Wright's most radical views while excusing his run-of-the-mill resentments as being a not-atypical part of the black experience.

But America will have a harder time swallowing excuses for corruption as being a run-of-the-mill aspect of the Illinois political experience - particularly not from a candidate that has promised a new kind of politics. To succeed, Obama would have to denounce the behavior of some of his closest allies and demonstrate a candor about his own experience in state government that's been missing from his campaign thus far. In the Rezko trial, Obama might have finally encountered a problem that a speech alone won't solve.

The latest in the series of pointless gestures that constitute Congressional energy policy came yesterday, when executives from five major oil companies were paraded before Ed Markey's House hearing on global warming. They served as political props for Members to denounce rising gas prices, ventilate Dick Cheney conspiracy theories and otherwise advertise their ignorance of the markets they purportedly oversee.

Democrats, for instance, might rejoice over higher energy costs, which is precisely the eco-policy they've been advocating for years. Until Congress finds a way to abolish the price mechanism, paying more for gasoline is the only signal that will tell Americans to cut their consumption. How exactly do Democrats think a carbon tax or cap-and-trade regime is going to work?

The oil executives performed a public service by pointing out other economic realities. About 70% of the price of gasoline is determined by the global price of crude, which is rising because of world-wide demand and volatility in the commodities markets, not to mention the Federal Reserve's easy-money policy. Congress might also look to its gas mandates and the corset it has laced around domestic production.

It's true that industry profits are at a record high, but oil is a classic boom-and-bust business, which is why billions in capital investments are folded back into exploration and production. Besides, the industry's effective tax rates are in the neighborhood of 40% to 44%. Over the past five years, Exxon Mobil's total U.S. tax bill exceeded its U.S. revenues by some $19 billion.

Mr. Markey also used the occasion to threaten special tax increases, grilling the executives about $18 billion in "subsidies," which are actually a tax deduction that Congress itself extended to all manufacturers, including Big Oil. And he demanded that the companies commit 10% of profits to renewable energy. But as an Exxon vice president put it, fossil fuels are still going to account for at least two-thirds of the world's energy consumption in three decades and whatever scientific progress is made, the practical prospects for alternatives remain "very, very small."

The violence comes weeks after unrest swept through Tibetan areas and Beijing responded with a security crackdown.

China is a police state, and if they can't keep the Tibetans under control trouble will explode all over the entire country. So expect more brutality against the Tibetans.

If China were to be transformed into a federal democracy, then they wouldn't have these problems and they'd become even richer even faster. After all, prosperity is a by product of liberty. Increases in liberty will increase prosperity.

Abuse is the normal Leftist substitute for rational debate and the term "racist" has some very unpleasant connotations so Leftists use it a lot. They particularly apply it to anyone who has any criticisms of immigration.

Conservatives are so used to abuse from Leftists that they usually just let such criticisms pass. Perhaps they should not.

Someone recently was foolish enough to imply that a rich British rock singer (Morrissey) was a racist. Bad move! Out came the lawyers, an action for libel was launched and much grovelling has now been produced by order of the court. See here for details. No doubt the accuser bore significant legal costs too.

The Greenie article from the BBC below sounds like a sober and balanced account of scientific findings. It is not. It is so evasive that it does not link to, quote or or even name the scientific article it purports to describe. One would normally expect some link on a website. So why is there none? Because the article says some things that DON'T suit the Greenie agenda. And the BBC writer does not mention those things, funnily enough. Rather amazing cheek but very BBC. These days BBC seems to stand for British Bias Corporation.

There are already some loud grumbles about this BBC propaganda effort and I reproduce some of that below. First is a scathing letter to the BBC author from John A. of Climate Audit and then follows a short excert from a very long and outraged email I have from Piers Corbyn of Weather Action. Corbyn is a very successful long-range British weather forecaster who relies heavily for his forecasts on his knowledge of solar cycles. So he KNOWS that solar variations drive temperature etc. here on earth. Corbyn is particularly outraged by the reference to the slapped-together Royal Society paper by Lockwood and Froehlich and it is commentary from Corbyn about that paper that I briefly excerpt

Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun's activity. The research contradicts a favoured theory of climate "sceptics", that changes in cosmic rays coming to Earth determine cloudiness and temperature. The idea is that variations in solar activity affect cosmic ray intensity. But Lancaster University scientists found there has been no significant link between them in the last 20 years.

Presenting their findings in the Institute of Physics journal, Environmental Research Letters, the UK team explain that they used three different ways to search for a correlation, and found virtually none. This is the latest piece of evidence which at the very least puts the cosmic ray theory, developed by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark at the Danish National Space Center (DNSC), under very heavy pressure.

Dr Svensmark's idea formed a centrepiece of the controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. "We started on this game because of Svensmark's work," said Terry Sloan from Lancaster University. "If he is right, then we are going down the wrong path of taking all these expensive measures to cut carbon emissions; if he is right, we could carry on with carbon emissions as normal."

Cosmic rays are deflected away from Earth by our planet's magnetic field, and by the solar wind - streams of electrically charged particles coming from the Sun. The Svensmark hypothesis is that when the solar wind is weak, more cosmic rays penetrate to Earth. That creates more charged particles in the atmosphere, which in turn induces more clouds to form, cooling the climate. The planet warms up when the Sun's output is strong.

Professor Sloan's team investigated the link by looking for periods in time and for places on the Earth which had documented weak or strong cosmic ray arrivals, and seeing if that affected the cloudiness observed in those locations or at those times. "For example; sometimes the Sun 'burps' - it throws out a huge burst of charged particles," he explained to BBC News. "So we looked to see whether cloud cover increased after one of these bursts of rays from the Sun; we saw nothing."

Over the course of one of the Sun's natural 11-year cycles, there was a weak correlation between cosmic ray intensity and cloud cover - but cosmic ray variability could at the very most explain only a quarter of the changes in cloudiness. And for the following cycle, no correlation was found.

Dr Svensmark himself was unimpressed by the findings. "Terry Sloan has simply failed to understand how cosmic rays work on clouds," he told BBC News. "He predicts much bigger effects than we would do, as between the equator and the poles, and after solar eruptions; then, because he doesn't see those big effects, he says our story is wrong, when in fact we have plenty of evidence to support it."

But another researcher who has worked on the issue, Giles Harrison from Reading University, said the work was important "as it provides an upper limit on the cosmic ray-cloud effect in global satellite cloud data". Dr Harrison's own research, looking at the UK only, has also suggested that cosmic rays make only a very weak contribution to cloud formation.

The Svensmark hypothesis has also been attacked in recent months by Mike Lockwood from the UK's Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory. He showed that over the last 20 years, solar activity has been slowly declining, which should have led to a drop in global temperatures if the theory was correct.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its vast assessment of climate science last year, concluded that since temperatures began rising rapidly in the 1970s, the contribution of humankind's greenhouse gas emissions has outweighed that of solar variability by a factor of about 13 to one.

According to Terry Sloan, the message coming from his research is simple. "We tried to corroborate Svensmark's hypothesis, but we could not; as far as we can see, he has no reason to challenge the IPCC - the IPCC has got it right. "So we had better carry on trying to cut carbon emissions."

I note your latest attempt in your continuing campaign to ignore and demean the considerable and growing evidence of natural influences on climate change, and especially on the cosmic ray/solar cycle hypothesis of Svensmark et al.

Last time you raced out of the blocks with an article entitled "No Sun link' to climate change" about a paper then yet to be published, and couldn't be bothered beyond leaving a few voicemail messages to contact Dr Svensmark for a response. The paper of course was by Lockwood and Froelich.

Then of course, you didn't bother reporting the reply from Svensmark because we don't want the license payers unnecessarily confused with a solid rebuttal, would we Richard? Especially since that paper by Lockwood that you trumpeted was rife with errors.

Obviously you won't spend any time reporting on them, because life's too short isn't it Richard? After all, what with burning up all of those carbon credits to visit glaciers calving perfectly naturally, and polar bear populations stridently not declining but growing strongly, there's no time for nuanced scientific reporting is there?

Now we have yet another example of your tawdry one-sided reporting with this one: "No Sun link' to climate change" (by the way, are you minimizing your carbon footprint by recycling the titles to articles?).

This time its a letter to a little known and little read environmental science journal - so we're a long way from any expertise in statistics or solar science, aren't we? This time the two scientists are Sloan and Wolfendale, and would you believe it! They come to the same conclusion as the one you want to hear! I'm not a betting man but if I was, I'd bet they contacted you about their forthcoming letter and you got some nice juicy "colour quotes" to pad it out to justify your BBC salary and the rest is history!

Nobody cares, because nobody checks anything! Except that even Sloan and Wolfendale don't show that there is "'No Sun link' to climate change", they say that even with their limited analysis of 20 some years, the Svensmark process on its own contributed perhaps 25% of the warming. That's not insignificant. That's not "no link", that's "some link" Richard. Even this limited analysis showed some connection between the Svensmark process and global climate.

You could have asked them to run the identical analysis looking at the correlation between carbon dioxide rise and temperature over the same time period, but you don't want to rock the boat by showing that the carbon dioxide link is even more tenuous than the Svensmark process you're trying to bury! Carbon dioxide has continued to rise, while global temperatures appear to have stopped rising in 1998 having stabilized below the 1998 level and might even now be starting to fall. Even the Met Office admits this - but you don't report that of course.

But that doesn't save the day, because in the same article that you failed to quote or even link to (and I think I know why you didn't link to it) comes this:

"However, Sloan and Wolfendale are not the only physicists to have recently turned their attention to the cosmic ray hypothesis. Vitaliy Rusov of the National Polytechnic University in Odessa, Ukraine and colleagues do not agree with the IPCC's view that man is to blame for the recent warming. To prove their point, they looked for a direct connection between cosmic ray flux and temperature."

"The team constructed a model of the Earth's climate in which the only significant inputs were variations in the Sun's power output and changes to the galactic cosmic ray flux (arxiv.org/abs/0803.2765). They found that the model's predicted evolution of the Earth's surface temperature over the last 700,000 years agrees well with proxy temperature data taken from Antarctic ice cores (arxiv.org/abs/0803.2766)."

"Rusov agrees that Svensmark's cosmic ray ionization mechanism cannot fully account for the observed correlation between cosmic ray flux and cloud cover, as Sloan and Wolfendale have demonstrated. But he believes that a small but direct link between cosmic rays and clouds could itself trigger a mechanism which causes further, and greater, changes in cloud cover."

So here was another model study over 700,000 years and the link between climate change and the solar/cosmic ray variation was crystal clear. But you couldn't be bothered reporting it, could you Richard? It didn't fit the narrative you've constructed.

Between copying and pasting Greenpeace publicity and encouraging reckless damage to the world economy and to the world's poor in the "Green Room", there simply isn't time in your day to even report accurately and fairly on environmental issues.

It doesn't matter that the BBC Trust says that its not the BBC's responsibility to save the planet, nor is it responsible journalism to refuse to report on the criticisms of well-qualified skeptics to the whole global warming scare, because with you and your colleagues in the hot seat to set the agenda of continuing alarm, the BBC Trust can go hang and the concerns of many BBC License payers are so much white noise to be filtered out by the next "Alarm over..." or the next "The IPCC says..." story concocted in the BBC tearoom from the latest mailshot from Greenpeace or Fiends of the Earth or the WWF - those billion dollar multi-national corporations of public alarm.

Of course when you or Shukman or the others are travelling to the four corners of the globe to report on why everyone else shouldn't travel to the four corners of the globe, there isn't time to stop in small faraway places like New York and report on major scientific conferences attended by hundreds of well-qualified scientists who dispute the IPCC reports and the AGW scare? Who knows? You could have interviewed the President of the Czech Republic after he give his keynote speech?

But no. No reporting because its not what you want to hear. So it wasn't reported by the BBC. Problem solved. Your journalistic behaviour has at least been consistent: tawdry, one-sided, lazy, propagandist, alarmist and disgraceful. This isn't BBC journalism that John Reith espoused, its more like extreme left-wing evangelization for the repeal of market economies by way of a faked vision of environmental apocalypse.

I encourage you to get honest: just join Greenpeace's publicity department officially and have done with it. You're doing the job already so you might as well get paid for it.

Excerpt from some comments by Piers Corbyn below:

I think that the BBC link and the related paper by Prof Lockwood is one of the most dishonest pieces of pseudo-science (next to Al Gore's movie) put about in the last 50 years and marks one of the lowest points in the CO2 Global Warming brainwashing enterprise.

The BBC steadfastly refuse to publish anything which refutes their baseless claims, and you may be interested to know that the BBC 'report' on Lockwood's findings appeared at the same time as his paper and had therefore clearly been drawn up in advance as propaganda and NOT a 'report' in the normal (?!) sense of investgating both sides of a subject and reporting fairly. I did appear on News24 and Radio 5 at the time but those comments and also comments by Nigel Calder on BBC around the same time were just to establish pseudo-balance and are not included in the BBC link above which is devoid of comment, gives no opportunity to comment and for which the BBC have refused to allow fair comment.

"Attempts to test influences of solar activity on Earth in detail shorter than 22 years without considering the magnetic links prove nothing. This however is what Prof Lockwood does. Obviously since temperatures driven by solar activity follow a 22yr (solar magnetic) cycle and the measures of solar activity used by Prof Lockwood follow an 11year cycle they must move in opposite directions half the time. Professor Lockwood's `finding' of a period of `oppositely directed trends' is just one such period. In fact Lockwood's finding confirms the general hypothesis of the solar charged particle based theory! The theories he actually tests are something else - involving only 11yr cycles - and amount to `straw men' to be knocked down. The cosmic ray theory is one of these. Although its originators did excellent experiments which showed that charged particles do have weather and climate effects, extra solar cosmic rays as such have no significant weather or climate impact.

It beggars belief that the Royal Society would publish a paper which purports to dismiss all theories of solar influence on Earth's weather while ignoring the ones that actually appear to work (certainly better than all others) and not even mentioning the many published observations of 22yr signals in various weather /flood etc parameters. (I say all theories here because the paper and its write-ups use Lockwood's dismissal of 11 yr theories as proof that all theories of sun-earth drivers fail). This means that the Royal Society peer review process in this case was strained in either integrity or knowledge of the subject.

Average global temperatures in 2008 are forecast to be lower than in previous years, thanks to the cooling effect of the ocean current in the Pacific, U.N. meteorologists say.

The World Meteorological Organisation's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, said it was likely that La Nina, an abnormal cooling of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, would continue into the summer.

If the forecast holds true, global temperatures will not have risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.

Hillary won New Jersey, but Corzine - who had endorsed her - is NOW saying he thinks that the nomination should go to whoever wins the overall popular vote.

Hillary is clearly more popular in Michigan and Florida than Obama - two critical states for the Dems in Nivember, but the DNC is fighting to keep their delegates out of the convention.

Hillary was leading in Pennsylvania by 15%, but Casey endorsed Obama.

Hillary won Ohio and California - in fact, Hillary has won every major state primary, but super-delegates are breaking for Obama.

It seems insane.

ARE DEMOCRATS MERELY IN THE THRALL OF THIS MELLIFLUOUS BARITONE?

SIMPLY ENRAPTURED BY THIS TALL AND DARK AND HANDSOME MAN?

HAVE THEY BEEN MESMERIZED BY HIS PLATITUDES, AND BEEN MADE CREDULOUS BY HIS GREAT ABILITY TO RAISE MONEY?

OR, DO DEMOCRATS HAVE A DEATH WISH?

I think most Democrats really know - deep down - that their whole entire ideology is bankrupt, kaput. And they see this charismatic young man as the HAIL MARY for their cause.

The Left finds faults with all their previous leaders - all the previous libs who ruled the day; according to the Left's mytholgy: FDR lied about Pearl Harbor and interned Japanese Americans; Truman dropped the BOMB; JFK got suckered into Vietnam and LBJ let the Pentagon War Machine control him; Carter was GREAT but weak; Clinton a triangulating phony.

The Left never blames their ideology. The USSR would've worked had it's leaders not been bad. Ditto China and North Korea and so on.

BUT OBAMA: HE'S THE MAN THEY'VE ALWAYS BEEN WAITING FOR!

The man who will make socialism at home and appeasement abroad work.

YEAH: right.

By the time November comes and goes - and the American people become aware of who Obama really is and what he really stands for - Obama will have made McGovern's loss look like a close fight.

And perhaps g his loss will be the final death knell of leftism in America.

So with the official book closed on March, here’s how the season at Snowmass shapes up:

• 118 inches fell in December, setting a record for the month.

• 95 inches fell in January, also setting a record for the month.

• 87 inches fell in February.

• 88 inches fell in March. (That fell significantly below the record of 101 inches that fell in 1984.) Snowmass collected more snow than Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands or Buttermilk this season, Hanle said.What makes this season particularly impressive is the consistency. “I can’t find another December, January, February and March that matches this one,” Hanle said.

... Prior winters — even the legendary season of 1983-84 — had at least one dud month, the records indicate. November was the only dud this winter at Aspen and Snowmass.

Depending on what fell Monday night, more than 34 feet of snow likely has fallen at Snowmass this season since Nov. 1. But March also produced what passes this season as a drought. No snow fell from March 22 to March 29, marking the longest period of the season without the white stuff, Hanle said.

... Hanle is reluctant to call this season a record-breaker. Part of the problem is questions about snow recording in the past and the possibility of inconsistencies. For example, he doesn’t know if 1983-84 data was collected as of Nov. 1 or beginning with Thanksgiving.

He did feel safe saying that the 400-inch mark for the season has only been broken twice before. The season average is about 300 inches.

HUMAN-cow embryos have been created in a world first at Newcastle University in England, hailed by the scientific community, but labelled "monstrous" by opponents.

A team has grown hybrid embryos after injecting human DNA into eggs taken from cows' ovaries, which had most of their genetic material removed.

The embryos survived for three days and are intended to provide a limitless supply of stem cells to develop therapies for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and spinal cord injuries, overcoming a worldwide shortfall in human embryos.

Not everyone is enthusiastic, however:

The Catholic Church in Britain branded the creations as "monstrous" - a view supported by Caroline Chisholm Centre for Health Ethics director Fr Kevin McGovern.

"An almost-human embryo is being created and then it's being destroyed," he said.

"I cannot see that that respects human life or the dignity of human life.

"Human beings - or even almost human embryos - are not just things that you can use in a laboratory experiment.

"What is being created is life.

"No one knows exactly what would grow from these embryos.

"If this is approved in the UK, there will be renewed pressure to permit it here, and we will travel further down the slippery slope of allowing just about anything."

The number of immigrants who have gone on early retirement and were declared permanently unemployed, went up by 171% in the past ten years, according to data collected by Eyvind Vesselbo, Liberals parliamentarian. Together with integration consultant Manu Sareen from the Copenhagen municipality he is alarmed by the numbers.

In 1998, there were 5,470 people who went on early pension of immigrant background. Today there are 14,800.

There are as many immigrants on early pension as there are unemployed.

The number of ethnic Danes on early retirement went down slightly.

Vesselbo says that they are repeating the mistakes of the 90s, when large groups of immigrants are sent on welfare. Now it's early retirement, and that's one element of the ghettos.

He thinks integration is made impossible when so many young people, who could be employed, are left with a check to do nothing and are allowed to live their lives in a closed world.

If the Muslim immigrants were industriously working to improve their economic positions and to assimilate into Danish society then this in itself would be meaningless. But the fact that these immigrants are using the welfare only to establish enclaves proves their intent.

And they're able to do this is in Denmark, which has reformed its welfare and immigration policies the last several years - (since the more conservative Fogh Rasmussen's party took over).

But the Danes - like most of Europe - are in so deep that it may be too late.

The EU should give ZERO welfare for non-assimilating residents. Assimilation is the very least that society should get n return for public assistance.

The recently released WHO update on the H5N1 transmission in Pakistan in late 2007 confirms it was human to human to (H2H2H).

The transmission chain is supported by disease onset dates, contacts, and laboratory confirmation of three of the four members in the transmission. This chain would match the largest confirmed chain, which involved more family members, but was limited to two distinct transmission events in Karo, Indonesia.

For the Pakistan cluster, the index case was a veterinarian, who was infected while leading a cull of poultry in October, 2007. He developed symptoms on October 29, several days after the cull. He infected one of his brothers who cared for him. The brother developed symptoms on November 12 and died November 19. This brother infected two other brothers, who both developed symptoms November 21. One brother died November 27, while the other brother recovered.

Testing confirms another two bird flu cases from cluster in Pakistan family

The World Health Organization has added two more people to Pakistan's avian influenza case count, saying followup blood testing confirmed additional cases from a suspected large family cluster late last year.

Multiple members of a family were eventually tested after one, a veterinary worker involved in culling H5N1 infected chickens, fell ill and seemed to set off a chain of infection within his extended family.

H5N1 wasn't initially suspected as the cause of illness, so the veterinary worker was not tested for it when he was sick. Once the virus was identified as a possible cause of the cluster of cases, only one member of the family - the third person to get sick - tested positive.

But more laborious followup testing - performed by looking for antibodies to the virus in the blood of surviving suspect cases - showed that the veterinary worker was indeed infected with H5N1.

The most likely explanation for the cluster is limited human-to-human spread, the WHO said.

"We believe that limited human to human transmission likely occurred among some of the family members," spokesperson Gregory Hartl said Thursday in an e-mail.

Britain has become the epicenter for anti-Semitic trends in Europe as traditional, age-old anti-Semitism in a country whose literature and cultural tradition were "drenched" in anti-Semitism has developed into a contemporary mix of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, an Israeli historian said Monday.

The problem of anti-Semitism in Britain is exacerbated by a growing and increasingly radical Muslim population, the weak approach taken by a timid British Jewish leadership, and the detachment of the British from their Christian roots, said Hebrew University historian Prof. Robert S. Wistrich in a lecture on British anti-Semitism at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

"Britain has become the center point for the meeting of anti-Semitic trends in Europe," Wistrich said.

In a wide-ranging two-hour address, the Cambridge University-educated historian, who has just completed a book on global anti-Semitism, traced the roots of British anti-Semitism to its history, culture and literature going back to medieval times.

"Anti-Semitism in Great Britain is at least a millennial phenomenon and has been around for 1000 years of recorded history," Wistrich said.

He noted that the expulsion of all Jews from Britain in 1290 by King Edward I following years of anti-Semitic violence was the first major expulsion of any Jewish community in Europe.

Jews were banned from Britain until 1656, when Oliver Cromwell, who had overthrown the monarchy, authorized their return.

Wistrich noted that a Jewish presence was not required in Britain to produce potent and resonating anti-Semitic stereotypes in classic English literature, including in works by Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Dickens, Trollope, T. S. Elliot, and D. H. Lawrence, which he said continues to impact British society hundreds of years later today.

"The authors are conveying and transmitting to a future generation an embedded anti-Semitism whose influence is impossible to underestimate," Wistrich said.

"English literature and culture is in fact drenched in anti-Semitism," he said, adding that British intellectuals fail to understand the long-term impact of this phenomenon.

I tend to think of both The Merchant of Venice's depiction of Shylock and Oliver Twist's depiction of Fagin as some of the worst examples. The latter example is definitely scummy.

During World War II, the British refusal to rescue the Jews of Europe and their decision to close the gates of Palestine stemmed not only from a policy of realpolitik but by anti-Semitic sentiments, he said.

"Nothing was to be construed as fighting a Jewish war," he said.

He noted that the famed British wartime leader, Winston Churchill's, record on Zionism was "far from brilliant, rhetoric aside" noting that he promoted the infamous White Paper, which severely limited Jews from immigrating to Palestine during World War II.

You know, while I personally don't think Churchill was the worst, I'm still going to have to start reevaluating my opinions on him. Hmm.

The recent controversial contemporary theory of a Jewish lobby controlling American government policies in the wake of the 2003 Iraq War actually had its antecedents a century earlier, and dated back to the infamous anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, while anti-Israel activities on British campuses was going "strong blast" in the 1970s, he said.

In his address, Wistrich said that today's British media had taken an almost universally anti-Israel bias, especially but not exclusively on the BBC, with context removed from description of Israeli military actions, and Islamic jihadist activity such as suicide bombing never connected to ideology.

"Under no circumstance will a Palestinian act of terrorism be referred to as terrorist, They are militants similar to the floor-shop dispute in Liverpool whose workers have decided to go on strike," he said.

"Palestinian terrorism is portrayed as a minor pin-prick compared to 'massive' retaliation of this 'rogue' state [Israel]," he said.

"You cannot read a British newspaper without encountering a variant of the libel that Zionism is racism or Zionism is Nazism," he said, describing a culture of "barely disguised hatred" when the subject of Zionism of British Jewry or Anglo-Israel relations is broached, unless they are "the good anti-Zionists."

With the media and the elites skewed against Israel - aided by former Israeli academics who routinely condemn the Jewish state and who have attained "historic dissident status and are listened to as the authentic voice of Israel" - the whole discussion of anti-Semitism had become distorted in Britain, with the accuser becoming the accused, he said.

"The self-proclaimed anti-racists of the [London Mayor Ken] Livingstone brand lead the pack when it comes to the prevailing discourse about Israel and by implication Jews."

"If you bring up the subject of anti-Semitism you are playing the anti-Semitism card and you are [seen as] a dishonest deceitful manipulative Jew or lover of Jews who is using the language of anti-Semitism to disguise hide or silence criticism of Israel," he said.

The tenure of former prime minister Tony Blair - considered to be the most favorable British premier to the State of Israel - was a paradox of the British situation today, Wistrich said.

He said that Blair's support for Israel during the Second Lebanon War was "the straw that broke the camel's back" for a British premier who had already supported the Iraq War and was closely allied with US President George W. Bush, and helped bring about his downfall.

Today, the rapidly growing Muslim community in Britain numbers at least 1.6 million, compared to about 350,000 Jews.

As I've noted before, chances are that the Muslim population in Britain is much higher than that, and could be at least 2 million (and the Jewish population may be less than 300,000).

Wistrich faulted British-Jewish leadership for taking a "softly softly approach," which he said was "very strange" and did not bear fruit in contemporary times.

"There is a long tradition of doing things behind closed doors and it is different to break with tradition but it should be broken," he said.

The historian noted that the straying of the British from their Christian roots has also created a changed reality in the Anglo-Israeli relationship with no Bible-based reasons or raison d'etre for a Jewish presence in the Holy Land.

He cited the recent support of the archbishop of Canterbury for the adoption of parts of Sharia, or Islamic law, in Britain - the same country, which, he noted, was once the birthplace of the US evangelical movement.

"The loss of Christian identity in what was the most Bible-believing culture in its day is one of the deeper layers of what has happened here," he said.

He noted some of the biblical remarks of prominent British leaders such as Lord Balfour and Lloyd George would be viewed as anathema today.

"You cannot speak or act that way today, or you would be considered the 'biggest threat to civilization' as American evangelicals are."

That's why it's important to bear in mind that in Britain, anti-Americanism has become just as prevalent as anti-Semitism. There is really very little left in England today for anyone with common sense to find worth living there for.

I wonder does he still have a hat? The equally despicable John Kerry does

Excerpt:

Last week's development in the Haditha case -- the dropping of all the charges leveled against Lance Cpl. Stephan Tatum for actions related to Haditha, Iraq -- drives another nail into the shameful accusations made by Time magazine and Rep. John Murtha.

Time magazine, with an assist from the Pennsylvania Democrat, sparked a legal and media inquisition against eight courageous United States Marines. Both Time and Murtha claimed these Marines committed cold-blooded murder in Haditha during a 2005 engagement. They also alleged the Marines participated in covering up their alleged atrocities. But after years of litigation and estimated $40 million in taxpayer funds expended, none of the Marines have been found guilty of committing murder or war crimes.

On Nov. 19, 2005, during an insurgent ambush of the Marines of Kilo Company 3rd battalion 1st Marines, 15 Iraqi civilians and nine suspected insurgent ambushers were killed. One Marine was killed in an IED explosion and two others seriously wounded. Thanks to the battalion intelligence officer, Lt. Jeff Dinsmore, who monitored the daylong engagement, the entire Marine chain of command were given the full story of the engagement that very night and it was agreed that no further action in connection with the civilian casualties was needed.

Months later, a Time story based on the testimony of two known insurgent propagandists and the stories of some Iraqi civilians falsely reported that the Kilo company Marines had wantonly murdered the dead Iraqis as an act of revenge after an IED explosion took the life of a fellow Marine. On the basis of Time's unsubstantiated allegations alone, Murtha publicly charged the Marines had gone on a rampage to avenge the killing of their comrade in the IED explosion and had committed cold-blooded murder. Time has been forced to issue four different retractions of details in their report.

Before any investigation had gotten underway Murtha went on a rampage of his own, attacking the Marines in venue after venue. In his original charges against the Marines, Murtha said there was no gunfire during the incident when there was in fact a daylong battle involving heavy insurgent gunfire directed at the Marines starting at the time of the IED explosion. Typical of Murtha's rantings were his comments on a May 28, 2006, ABC News broadcast. In response to George Stephanopolis' comment that he claimed to have been briefed several times since Nov. 19 and said that that the evidence showed that the Marines had committed cold-blooded murder, Murtha said: "Well there's no question in my mind, what happened was an IED exploded. It killed one Marine. And then a taxi drives up. When the taxi comes up there's four of five people in it. And they shoot . shoot those four or five people unarmed. "And then they go on a rampage throughout the houses and kill people.

This time from NOAA. But in so doing they re-use the now totally discredited Mann "hockeystick". If that is not a warning of loose argumentation, what would be? It says: "Propaganda, not science coming up!" I reproduce the article below and follow it with some comments.

Norse seafaring and colonization around the North Atlantic at the end of the 9th century was generalized as proof that the global climate then was warmer than today. In the early days of paleoclimatology, the sparsely distributed paleoenvironmental records were interpreted to indicate that there was a "Medieval Warm Period" where temperatures were warmer than today. This "Medieval Warm Period" or "Medieval Optimum," was generally believed to extend from the 9th to 13th centuries, prior to the onset of the so-called "Little Ice Age."In contrast, the evidence for a global (or at least northern hemisphere) "Little Ice Age" from the 15th to 19th centuries as a period when the Earth was generally cooler than in the mid 20th century has more or less stood the test of time as paleoclimatic records have become numerous. The idea of a global or hemispheric "Medieval Warm Period" that was warmer than today however, has turned out to be incorrect.

There are not enough records available to reconstruct global or even hemispheric mean temperature prior to about 600 years ago with a high degree of confidence. What records that do exist show is that there was no multi-century periods when global or hemispheric temperatures were the same or warmer than in the 20th century. For example, Mann et al. (1999) generated a 1,000 year Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction (shown above) using data from multiple ice cores and tree ring records. This reconstruction suggests that the 1998 annual average temperature was more than two standard deviations warmer than any annual average temperature value since AD 1,000 (shown in yellow). (For complete scientific reference of this study, please click here. Link to Mann 1999 FTP Data.)

In summary, it appears that the 20th century, and in particular the late 20th century, is likely the warmest the Earth has seen in at least 1200 years. To learn more about the so-called "Medieval Warm Period", please read this review published in Climatic Change, written by M.K. Hughes and H.F. Diaz.

There is actually a lot to like in the article above. It is a rare acknowledgement of hemispheric differences. It is only one small step away from them having to admit that the warming of the 1980s and 1990s was also in the Northern hemisphere only. They won't ever mention that, I imagine, but those of us with no axe to grind can do so.

I also see virtue in their comment that "There are not enough records available to reconstruct global or even hemispheric mean temperature prior to about 600 years ago with a high degree of confidence". 600 years is only a tiny slice of geological time so how can anyone be sure that recent climate events are anything out of the ordinary?

And even if we accept Mann's hockeystick, look where it ends: in 1998. Since then we have only reached within 0.25 deg of that point once; in Jan 2007, and other than that time, we haven't reached within 0.35 deg C of that 1998 point; but then as of Jan 2008, we are all the way back down to about where we were in the year 1000 AD. (according to Mann). Pesky?

But I think that the Coup de Grace for the bulldust above is this paper, which shows that there WAS a mediaeval warm period in the Southern hemisphere. And note that it relies on tree rings, just as Mann does.

But now two months have passed since Edwards dropped out—tempus fugit!—and still no endorsement. Why? According to a Democratic strategist unaligned with any campaign but with knowledge of the situation gleaned from all three camps, the answer is simple: Obama blew it. Speaking to Edwards on the day he exited the race, Obama came across as glib and aloof. His response to Edwards’s imprecations that he make poverty a central part of his agenda was shallow, perfunctory, pat. Clinton, by contrast, engaged Edwards in a lengthy policy discussion. Her affect was solicitous and respectful. When Clinton met Edwards face-to-face in North Carolina ten days later, her approach continued to impress; she even made headway with Elizabeth. Whereas in his Edwards sit-down, Obama dug himself in deeper, getting into a fight with Elizabeth about health care, insisting that his plan is universal (a position she considers a crock), high-handedly criticizing Clinton’s plan (and by extension Edwards’s) for its insurance mandate.

The implications of this story are several and not insignificant. Most obviously, it suggests that the front-runner’s diplomatic skills could use some refinement. It also raises the issue, which has cropped up in a different form after New Hampshire, Super-Duper Tuesday, and the Ohio and Texas primaries, of Obama’s capacity to close the deal. But equally important is how it bears on the questions du jour among Democrats who see their once-uplifting primary campaign descending into self-destructive mayhem: How can we put this thing to bed? How can Clinton be stopped from putting the party through three more months of hell? Where are those vaunted “party elders” who can convince her that it’s sayonara time?

Barack [middle name redacted] Obama is glib and aloof. He is cold. He is rude. As JR noted here at TAB, "psychopaths can only keep up their "nice guy" act for so long."

A bird flu virus that killed dogs in South Korea can spread from one dog to another, showing that the disease is capable of crossing species and causing widespread sickness in mammals, a study found.

A cocker spaniel and a miniature schnauzer were among dozens of dogs in South Korea sickened by an H3N2 strain from birds, researchers said in a study published in the May issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases journal. Viruses taken from the sick canines were used in an experiment later to see if pathogens were capable of spreading from dog to dog.

The findings add to scientific understanding of how flu viruses evolve in animals and the risks they pose to humans. A separate bird flu strain called H5N1 has killed 236 people worldwide by spreading primarily from birds to humans. If a deadly H5N1 strain evolved like the strain in today's study to spread from one human to another, it could kill millions.

Obama uses such hate speech reflexively -- until he is forced to back off by a reference to reality. Excerpt below:

"One need not follow Democratic politics too carefully to hear who the bad guys are. They are often singled out as a specific class, with the phrases "wealthy Americans" or "the wealthiest of Americans." This happens most frequently when Democrats, refusing to acknowledge that taxes were cut earlier this decade for all Americans (the poor and the middle class included), decry the so-called "tax-cuts for the wealthy." But the assailants are also described in other broad, collective terms and phrases, and here`s a brief list: "corporate America;" "business owners;" "big oil;" "Wall Street;" "executives," "pharmaceutical companies;" "CEO`s," "companies that outsource jobs;" and "mortgage lenders."

The most subtle, and perhaps the most damaging outcome of this rhetoric, is that ignores the human toil, risk, sacrifice, discipline, and determination that is required for a person to become a business owner, or an executive, or to operate a pharmaceutical company or be a mortgage lender or to participate in global trade. Call it "class warfare," or "the politics of envy." It is the left's most acceptable form of "hate speech," and it is turning the discontent and fearful in our society against the people and principles that enable economic opportunity for all.

And now, back to Obama. He's had enormous political success with this rhetoric, especially in front of college students and blue-collar manufacturing workers. But then he sat down for a live interview with Maria Bartiromo, Anchor at the CNBC Cable TV financial news channel, and things went quite differently. Roughly half-way into the interview, Bartiromo asked Obama about how high he might like to raise the capital gains tax above its current rate of 15%. Obama explained that he has consulted on this issue with Warren Buffet and "others," and he has been told that a cap gains tax rate of 20 - 25% would not "distort economic decision making" (whatever this means).

"But it's not just the Warren Buffets of the world who own stocks" Bartiromo replied.

"Absolutely" exclaimed Obama. "So it's not just the rich." "No, no no, absolutely" Obama insisted. "And that's why I think that..uh...for example..you could structure something in which people with certain incomes were exempted from this increase.."

Find the video or transcript and get the full story yourself. The point here is simple: "the politics of envy" works great on the campaign trail, but as fiscal policy it threatens to harm all Americans, and is ultimately untenable. Obama even conveyed to Bartiromo the possibility that taxes might not be raised at all, depending on what the nation's economic conditions might be next year when he hypothetically would begin his Presidency. Obama had to back-away from his own rhetoric when he was put to the test.

As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying. The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.

Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career. Why? “Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

An Atlanta, Georgia, judge who ordered white lawyers out of his courtroom so he could lecture African-American defendants called that decision a "mistake" Tuesday night.

"In retrospect, it was a mistake," Judge Marvin Arrington told CNN. "Because my sheriff said to me, 'Judge, that message should be given to everybody' -- 'Don't violate the law, make something out of yourself, go to school, find a role model, somebody that will help you advance your life.'"

Arrington, who is African-American, is a judge in Fulton County, Georgia, which includes the city of Atlanta.

He said he got fed up seeing a parade of young black defendants shuffle into his courtroom and decided to address them one day last week -- out of the earshot of white lawyers.

"I came out and saw the defendants, and it was about 99.9 percent Afro-Americans," Arrington told CNN affiliate WSB-TV of Atlanta, "and at some point in time, I excused some lawyers -- most of them white -- and said to the young people in here, 'What in the world are you doing with your lives?'"

The judge thought his message would make a greater impact if he delivered it to a black-only audience, he said.

WHEN BLACK JUDGES FEEL COMFORTABLE ADMONISHING BLACK DEFENDANTS IN FRONT OF WHITES, THEN WE WILL HAVE RE-CROSSED A IMPORTANT THRESHOLD AGAIN.

YEARS OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND REVERSE DISCRIMINATION AND "VICTIMHOOD STATUS" HAVE INCREASED THE RACIAL DIVIDE IN THIS COUNTRY MORE THAN WHITE RACISM.

ABC blogger Jake Tapper reveals an oily misdirection on the part of Barack (name redacted) Hussein. Oops. Got the redaction part wrong... again. Hate when that happens.

[You may have seen a] Barack Obama TV ad where he's standing in a gas station saying the following:

"Since the gas lines of the ’70s, Democrats and Republicans have talked about energy independence, but nothing’s changed — except now Exxon’s making $40 billion a year, and we’re paying $3.50 for gas... I’m Barack Obama. I don’t take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won’t let them block change anymore. They’ll pay a penalty on windfall profits. We’ll invest in alternative energy, create jobs and free ourselves from foreign oil. I approve this message because it’s time that Washington worked for you. Not them."

GAZA — In the Katib Wilayat mosque one recent Friday, the imam was discussing the wiliness of the Jew.

“Jews are a people who cannot be trusted,” Imam Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas told the faithful. “They have been traitors to all agreements — go back to history. Their fate is their vanishing. Look what they are doing to us.”

At Al Omari mosque, the imam cursed the Jews and the “Crusaders,” or Christians, and the Danes, for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. He referred to Jews as “the brothers of apes and pigs,” while the Hamas television station, Al Aksa, praises suicide bombing and holy war until Palestine is free of Jewish control.

Its videos praise fighters and rocket-launching teams; its broadcasts insult the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, for talking to Israel and the United States; its children’s programs praise “martyrdom,” teach what it calls the perfidy of the Jews and the need to end Israeli occupation over Palestinian land, meaning any part of the state of Israel.

Such incitement against Israel and Jews was supposed to be banned under the 1993 Oslo accords and the 2003 “road map” peace plan.While the Palestinian Authority under Fatah has made significant, if imperfect efforts to end incitement, Hamas, no party to those agreements, feels no such restraint.

The official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper describes the murderer of eight yeshiva students in Jerusalem as a "groom" and his burial as his "wedding celebration."

The story in Mahmoud Abbas's Al Hayat Al Jadida goes on to evoke the neighborhood Jabal Mukaber's "week of anticipation... preparing themselves for the wedding procession."

The term "wedding" is the expression commonly used in PA society, and in PA schoolbooks as well, to describe the death of Shahids - Martyrs for Allah. According to Islamic tradition, they will wed the 72 Dark- Eyed Maidens (Virgins) of Paradise.

The article then reports the "shocking news" for the "thousands who were waiting" that the Israeli Army had decided to force a pre-dawn burial to prevent community celebrations of the murders and the murderer. It bemoans the fact "that the groom was buried in the [early] morning without a celebration and without a wedding procession."

However, the PA daily vows that the wedding celebrations will continue:

"The wedding will not end this way... it will last three consecutive days in which [the town] al-Sawahra will welcome all of those who come to congratulate the groom and will hang his portrait embracing the nation's flags."

Seeing the Martyr's death as a wedding can be found throughout Palestinian society. Some examples:

New Palestinian Schoolbook:

"... I will not cry during this wedding, as our Arabness does not want us to cry over the Shahids."[Arabic Language and the Science of Language, grade 12, p. 13 (2006)]

THIS PROVES THAT THE NYTIMES IS WRONG. AND WRONG TO MINIMIZE THIS ISSUE.

SADLY, BUSH AND RICE ARE PARTICIPATING WITH THE NYTIMES IN THIS DEADLY CHARADE.